“Michigan today has a strong foundation of research and development activity, a promising indicator of the state’s capacity to reinvent itself and move toward a knowledge economy.”

Michigan’s Economic Transition: Toward a Knowledge Economy
By Thomas Ivacka, University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy

Michigan’s Emerging Economy

As Michigan transitions to a knowledge economy, Seyferth Spaulding Tennyson Inc. (SST) has been working with more and more innovative and entrepreneurial companies, assessing market potentials and launching companies and new products. Also on the new horizon are homeland security initiatives and organizations created solely to guide entrepreneurial companies toward success. Here are a few of the cutting-edge companies and initiatives that SST has helped as they lead Michigan into a new economy:

LPiT Solutions, Inc., an information technology company that provides a variety of software applications, introduced Tissue TrackCore, a Web-based software that gives health care organizations the ability to track human tissue from its source, through storage and its implantation beyond to the follow-up stage after implantation.

Detroit Medical Center introduced 10 mobile robots for “telerounding,” giving physicians and nurses the ability to meet “face-to-face” with patients from a remote location. The DMC uses this unique approach across a full spectrum of specialties, including: trauma care, intensive care, medical/surgical, pediatrics, rehabilitation and general medicine. But the RP robots can also be used for monitoring ICU patients, support in surgery, physician/nurse consultations and resident training.

ObjectVideo provides intelligent video software. The company’s products convert video to data in real-time through the detection, classification and tracking of activities. With this technology, end users are able to obtain vision-based business intelligence, improve surveillance effectiveness, manage building systems more accurately and reduce loss in retail environments.

X-Rite Incorporated is the world’s largest designer and manufacturer of color measurement instruments and software systems. Headquartered in Grand Rapids, the company’s products are used by the commercial printing, textiles, automotive and plastics industries to measure and match colors precisely. The company has facilities in Europe, Asia and Latin America for applications, sales and services.

Zeeland Farm Services designed and built a gas pipeline and compression station that transports methane gas produced from naturally decomposing organic waste in a landfill to its converted boilers six miles away. There, the alternative energy source produces heat and steam to meet the demand for energy that is required to run the company’s soybean processing plant.

Region 2 South Medical Bio-Defense Network (R2S) is an emergency preparedness coalition of health care professionals, emergency managers, police and fire departments, emergency medical organizations, 37 hospitals and four public health departments serving Wayne, Washtenaw and Monroe counties. Its mission is to provide a synchronized health care response in the event of a mass disaster. Whether the disaster is a terrorist act or a natural occurrence (tornados, hurricanes, avian flu, etc.), R2S will augment and support existing resources to assist hospital emergency departments and health care services and keep them from getting overwhelmed. (SST serves as the public information officer for R2S.)

Serenus Johnson Portables, a Bay City, Michigan-based company, developed and patented the MetaSpace system, a modular, transportable health care facility that can be deployed rapidly in emergency situations.

Falcon Waterfree Technologies, a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company, manufactures waterfree urinal systems that promote the water conservation goals of the LEED Green Building Rating System™. The units are flushless, odor free, hard to vandalize, clog free and eliminate plumbing problems due to continuous running water or flushing. These benefits make the units ideal for large venues like Miami’s Dolphin Stadium, Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, Heathrow Airport and even the Taj Mahal in India. Each waterfree urinal at Dolphin Stadium saves an average of 40,000 gallons of water a year, the equivalent of nearly six full tanker trucks.

The Wolverine Clean Energy Venture is exploring the feasibility of building a major electric power generating facility and wind energy farm near Rogers City, Michigan.

The West Michigan Science & Technology Initiative (WMSTI) helps science and technology companies to transform their discoveries into viable and profitable products.

Elkins Innovations developed a low-cost, lightweight prosthetic device that mimics the human hand’s grasping capability using wireless control from foot-activated sensors.

The Detroit Medical Center’s Seetha Shankaran, M.D. led the DMC and 15 other U.S. hospitals in a revolutionary medical study to uncover a technique that would prevent and/or reduce the chances for disability and death among infants who failed to receive enough oxygen or blood to the brain during birth. Under Shankaran’s direction, it was determined that lowering a newborn baby’s body temperature to approximately 92 degrees Fahrenheit within the first six hours of life would improve the oxygen- or blood-deprived infant’s chances of survival and quality of life.